A business card scanner is a compact scanner for reading and organizing business cards. A business card is scanned into a graphic file by the business card scanner, and the graphic file of the business card is sent to a computer through a standard computer interface such as USB interface. The graphic file is then accessed by post-processing software such as optical character reorganization (OCR) software to convert it into text information. The text information may include Name, Title, Company, E-mail and Address field and can then be saved to an address file such as MS Outlook® address file.
In the known art, there is no known method that enables the scanning of a business card from within MS Outlook® directly into its own contact file. In today's art, a third party application is needed to import the scanned textual and image data into the MS Outlook® address file. CardScan™ from Corex is such a product in today's market which can scan a business card and update MS Outlook® address book, but it needs to be run separately and cannot be run from within MS Outlook®. Other such products are BizCardReader from CardReader Inc., SnapScan™ from FutureDial's, WorldCard from AsiaZest (Alestron Inc.) and IRIS Business Card Reader.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,499,108 given to Cotte et al. provides a document scanning system that is triggered by the inserted document which then lunches the software application. It is desirable to be able to auto sense the inserted document being controlled by the software application without having to lunch another application.
It is thus desirable to be able to scan a business card or a driver's license from within MS Outlook® and be able to automatically store the extracted data in the MS Outlook® address book, without having to open another application. This will release the user from the need to open a third party application that is dedicated to scanning the card, extracting the data and then it can also update the MS Outlook® address book.